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Tech Tips / Windows NT / Disk and File Management

How can I undelete a file in Windows NT?

If you've permanently deleted a file - which is to say that it's not in the Recycle Bin—and realize that you still need it, there may be a way to recover it. It's important to stop all activity on the computer as soon as possible once you realize you need a deleted file, thereby reducing the risk of another file overwriting the data to be recovered.

The DOS utility Undelete.exe, which comes with the NT Resource Kit, will allow you to retrieve a file that was on a FAT partition. If the file deleted was on an NTFS partition, the Undelete utility will not work. NTFS does not perform destructive deletes, so the actual data is left intact on the disk until another file is written in its place. There are some third-party vendors that have written programs that allow for the retrieval of deleted files on NTFS partitions.